Power conditioner help

Right, Jafant, though I have not talked with him as often.

Herndonb, are you a dealer for Purist? I see you're selling one of those cords.

If there is any interest, clear, concise expert information on the subject can be had by contacting Grant at Shunyata Research.

The best power conditioners were not offered to high end audio.

They were made by Elgar (still in business). They used a massive isolation transformer which had a feedback winding on it. A low distortion oscillator was used, synced to the AC line frequency. The output of the transformer was then compared to that of the oscillator and a correction voltage was generated and applied to the feedback winding.

The result was AC voltage regulation and THD of no more than 0.1% at full current (one of the larger units could supply 28 amps).

The biggest problem that power conditioners face is the 5th harmonic of the line frequency, which most conditioners can't filter out. This harmonic heats up power transformers, causes rectifiers to become noisy and causes reverse currents to exist in AC synchronous motors. IOW its pretty pesky. By comparison, spikes and high frequency noise are non-issues!

The Elgars are some of the few conditioners that not only eliminate the high frequency noise but also the 5th harmonic. The SP Audio regenerator conditioners can filter this noise but don't have the capacity for high current. So they can be problematic if you have a higher power tube amplifier or a higher power class A transistor amp where there is a larger amount of steady state current draw.

Elgar saw years ago that the power conditioner market was shrinking and moved their business model away from that part of the market. So these days to get the best you have to buy them used and have them refurbished. Its rare that one can talk about the best in high end audio but this is one of those cases. 

Balanced power, like a unit from Equi=Tech, lifetime warranty and it's what big time recording studios and musicians use.